Chris McGrath Poletto and her mother, Jo McGrath, are the kind of new customers RTD is looking for.
On Thursday, they joined 90 members and guests from the City Club of Denver for a preview trip on the new southeast light-rail line, which opens to the public Nov. 17.
“I’m not a bus person,” said Poletto, who lives in the Denver Tech Center area and typically commutes to her job at a downtown law firm by car.
“I’ll definitely use it,” Poletto said as the train whisked her and her mom toward the Lincoln station at 55 mph.
“I am concerned about parking,” Poletto said. “I don’t want it to be cumbersome.” Using the train “has to be more convenient than hopping in the car every day.”
The 19-mile southeast line will have 13 stations with about 7,500 parking spaces. There are concerns that Regional Transportation District park-n-Ride lots will fill quickly each day, discouraging some potential rail patrons.
That was the problem when southwest light rail opened in 2000, and a parking shortage has remained a vexing issue on the southwest line.
RTD officials expect the southeast train will handle as many as 34,000 passenger trips a day by the end of the year.
To reduce demand for parking spaces, RTD is encouraging southeast riders to use an expanded local bus network to funnel them to rail stations, or a new taxi-like call-n-Ride service to get between home and the station.
McGrath, who lives near East Belleview Avenue and South Yosemite Street, said she’ll look into whether there will be convenient bus service to get her to the Belleview station.
She particularly likes the idea of taking the train to Colorado Avalanche games at the Pepsi Center, where the doors to the arena are a short walk from the rail platform.
“My concern is about security,” McGrath said. She asked, what are RTD’s plans to ensure the safety of rail riders, especially customers using park-n-Ride garages at night?
The agency will have live video- surveillance cameras monitoring all 13 station platforms, said John Tarbert, RTD’s manager of security. Stations will also have emergency phones that dial 911 with a push of a button, he said.
Parking garages operated by RTD will have surveillance cameras on all floors, said agency spokesman Scott Reed.
“We’re bringing a huge amount of video surveillance” to the southeast line, Reed said.
RTD is contracting for 30 additional private security guards to ride trains and monitor stations and parking lots on the line, Tarbert said.
When their ride ended at the University of Denver station, Poletto and McGrath priced some future trips on a new ticket vending machine.
The devices are an improvement over current RTD ticket machines, which often confound and confuse new riders.
After punching up a sample trip on the touch screen, Poletto said, “This is very user-friendly.”
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
